See Gregg, my Wife is a Nurse and by far and a way the worst "behaviour" on a ward, is always funnily enough young women with Drug Addictions.

Them and OAP's with UTI's- Completely bonkers.

But I get your point that Alcohol is a major cause of casulaties, but then again go into A&E at 4 on a Saturday and it's just as full of people injured on the field of sport.

Anyway, you can attack so called middle class, sterotyping head up arse cheap jean wearers, for saying that drugs should not be legalized and generally they can lead to very antisocial behavior and crime, that is your choice. It's not what I would call particularly fair or reasoned, but hey that will be the Drugs!

Seriously though I do get it, wern't there some particularly successfull people and queens addicted to Opiates? It's not the drugs I object to in the slightest, it's the behaviours.

Millymollymandy wrote:Bloody smilies, always being used. I hate them and they should be banned.
No I won't use a smiley because I've decided to turn into Boboff, as he's turned all nice all of a sudden. Grumble grumble.

boboff wrote:Anyway, you can attack so called middle class, sterotyping head up arse cheap jean wearers, for saying that drugs should not be legalized

That's not actually bit I was objecting to. There's a reasonable difference of opinion there. What I object to is the lazy stereotyping of all "drug users" (though obviously not all drug users, since alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are also drugs) as irredeemably broken antisocial wasters.

Just come across this thread and thought I would add some personal thoughts. Two of my sons smoked weed when they were teenagers. The eldest was fairly (!for a teenager!) sensible and controlled. He was diagnosed with epilepsy at 16yrs and found that he had much fewer fits when he smoked a joint. The other son smoked more and became paranoid. Eventually he was sectioned and spent three months in hospital. He was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and remains quite disturbed even though he has stopped smoking marijuana. The doctors feel (and I agree) that he was the type of personality who may have developed mental health problems of this sort eventually but that marijuana triggered the condition.
Subsequently, I am not sure how I feel about it all except that the illegality of it was definetely a factor in both of them trying it. I totally disagree with the idea that it automatically leads to stronger drug use. Overall I think the idea of allowing it to be sold legally in a controlled way would be safer and reduce the criminal activity based on its sale.
Just my opinion!

Well, isn't that interesting. So it appears Portugal has the most liberal attitude to drug use in the EU and fewer people there have smoked dope than have snorted cocaine in the US where there are some of the harshest penalties. And they have more people seeking treatment and the treatment costs less than locking them up, which can't be bad news in these hard times. And, overall, drug use is dropping. I wonder how the consumption of wine is bearing up?

OK, they've not actually gone root & branch after the criminality in the supply side, which they could do by growing their own (opium is grown around us, as is hemp, so I'd guess they are have the climate, though coca might need more humidity and the synthetic stuff like MDMA is easy bucket chemistry), nor have they tried to turn a crust by taking over the trade themselves, but they seem to be on the way to achieving what they set out to do.

But have they increased the net sum total of human happiness? Probably.